RUSH: It’s like the Wizard of Oz. It is a great opportunity, ladies and gentlemen, to finally peer behind the curtain and see the real side, the dark side of someone like Bill Clinton. Quite a revealing little scene with Chris Wallace. And among other things, it is a reminder why character matters most in a president. Clinton’s one of those people, we’ve all met them, turn most aggressive and enraged when what’s being said about them is true. It was fascinating to watch, no question about it, but there’s nothing in it that surprised me. I’m a Clintonologist and have been for many, many moons. Let’s go to the audio sound bites. Mike, it’s going to be really hard for me to not shout stop after every five or six words here. I’m going to try to be disciplined, but that’s how often lies occur in this appearance. Try to listen to this whole thing at once, this first bite we have is a minute 14. We may do a start and stop analysis of it thereafter. Question: Wallace says, “When we announced that you were going to be on Fox News Sunday, I got a lot of e-mail from viewers, and I’ve got to say, I was surprised. Most of them wanted me to ask you this question. ‘Why didn’t you do more to put bin Laden and Al-Qaeda out of business when you were president?'”
CLINTON: I’m being asked this on the Fox network.
RUSH: Stop the tape. I’m sorry, can’t help myself. The first thing out of his mouth in response to this question is, I’m being asked about this on the Fox network. If this doesn’t illustrate the Democrats know who their friends are, and that there is a difference in the media. I know this is just an observation, folks, and you all know it, but so do they, is the point. And that’s what makes this outrageous. Clinton knows he gets soft coverage. He knows he gets fawning coverage, so many female reporters, “Oh, please why not me, Mr. Clinton, instead of Barbra Streisand? Why not me in the White House?” Clinton says, (doing impression) “You seen her boobs? She showed up at my thing without a bra, you’re asking me why you’re not there? (Laughing) Get a clue.” Here’s the rest of the bite.
CLINTON: ABC just had a right-wing conservative run their little pathway to 9/11, falsely claiming it was based on the 9/11 Commission report with three things asserted against me directly contradicting the 9/11 Commission report. And I think it’s very interesting that all the conservative Republicans who now say I didn’t do enough claim that I was too obsessed with bin Laden, all —
RUSH: All right, all right, all right, hold it. Stop, stop the tape. Let’s share with you some research here. All of the conservative Republicans who now say I didn’t do enough claim that I was too obsessed with bin Laden? Well, let’s see, the next line, too.
CLINTON: President Bush’s neocons thought I was too obsessed with bin Laden. They —
RUSH: Stop the tape. All right, exhaustive research indicates, folks, that there was nothing but total Republican support for getting bin Laden. The people did a thorough NexisLexis search over the weekend. A thorough LexisNexis search identified absolutely no instances of high-ranking Republicans ever suggesting that Clinton was obsessed with bin Laden or that he did too much to apprehend him prior to the bombing of the USS Cole in October of 2000. Quite the contrary, Republicans were typically highly supportive of Clinton’s efforts in this regard.
As a little background here from the AmericanThinker.com, prior to the August ’98 US embassy bombings in Africa, there is hardly any mention of bin Laden by Clinton in American news transcripts, prior to 1998, even though bin Laden declared war on the United States in 1996, after the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Clinton didn’t even — maybe a couple sentences in his Saturday radio address which followed the bombing on February 26th of ’93 — he didn’t want to deal with it. He told New York it was a local law enforcement issue, you people handle it, wanted nothing to do with it. No mention, hardly any mention of bin Laden by President Clinton in American news transcripts. And for the most part, the first real discussion of bin Laden by Clinton or by any US politicians for that matter began after the embassy bombings in 1998 and escalated after the American retaliation in Afghanistan a few weeks later.
“At the time, the former president was knee-deep in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, so much so that the press was abuzz with the possibility that Clinton had performed these attacks to distract the American people from his extracurricular activities much as in the movie Wag the Dog.” But that begs the question, why did this possibility even get raised? It’s because of Clinton’s own behavior with Monica Lewinsky. It wasn’t made up by a right-wing conspiracy, and it wasn’t made up by a bunch of enemies out to get him. It was a direct offshoot and result of his behavior. “Were there high-ranking Republicans that piled on this assertion? Hardly. As the Associated Press reported on the day of the attacks, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia) said the following on August 20, 1998: ‘Well, I think the United States did exactly the right thing. We cannot allow a terrorist group to attack American embassies and do nothing. And I think we have to recognize that we are now committed to engaging this organization and breaking it apart and doing whatever we have to to suppress it, because we cannot afford to have people who think that they can kill Americans without any consequence. So this was the right thing to do.'”
There was Republican support for this, as I have drummed into people’s heads constantly, and yet Clinton is out there convinced that Republicans were angry at him because he was obsessed with bin Laden. “Gingrich was not alone in his support. CNN?s Candy Crowley reported on August 21, 1998, the day after cruise missiles were sent into Afghanistan: ‘With law makers scattered to the four winds on August vacation, congressional offices revved up the faxes. From the Senate majority leader [Trent Lott], ‘Despite the current controversy, this Congress will vigorously support the president in full defense of America?s interests throughout the world.’ Crowley continued: ‘The United States political leadership always has and always will stand united in the face of international terrorism.'” Those are the words of Jesse Helms. Well, we know that’s not the case anymore. The United States political leadership does not stand united in the face of international terrorism today under President Bush’s watch.
“The Atlanta Urinal Constipation, same day: ‘Our nation has taken action against very deadly terrorists opposed to the most basic principles of American freedom,’ said Sen. Paul Coverdell, a Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. ‘This action should serve as a reminder that no one is beyond the reach of American justice.’ Former vice president Dan Quayle was quoted by CNN on August 23, 1998: ‘I don?t have a problem with the timing. You need to focus on the act itself. It was a correct act. Bill Clinton took?made a decisive decision to hit these terrorist camps. It?s probably long overdue.’ Were there some Republican detractors? Certainly. Chief amongst them was Sen. Dan Coats of Indiana: ‘I think we fear that we may have a president that is desperately seeking to hold onto his job in the face of a firestorm of criticism and calls for him to step down.’
“Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) also questioned the timing at first. However, other Republicans pleaded with dissenters on their side of the aisle to get on board the operation, chief amongst them, Gingrich himself. As reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Speaker felt the ‘Wag the Dog’ comparisons were ‘sick’: ‘Anyone who saw the bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, anyone who saw the coffins come home, would not ask such a question,’ said the House speaker, referring to the 12 Americans killed in the embassy bombings. In fact, Gingrich did everything within his power to head off Republican criticism of these attacks as reported by the Boston Globe on August 23, 1998: ‘Indeed, Gingrich even saw to it that one of his political associates, Rich Galen, sent a blast-Fax to conservative talk radio hosts urging them to lay off the president on the missile strikes, and making sure they knew of Gingrich?s strong support.'”
Even in the end, both Specter and Coats got on board the operation. “After reviewing intelligence information collected on bin Laden, Specter said: ‘I think the president acted properly.'”
“As for ‘neocons,’ one so-called high-ranking member, Richard Perle, wrote the following in an August 23, 1998, op-ed published in the Sunday Times: ‘For the first time since taking office in 1993, the Clinton administration has responded with some measure of seriousness to an act of terror against the United States. This has undoubtedly come as a surprise to Osama Bin Laden, the Saudi terrorist believed to have been behind the bombing… So Thursday?s bombing is a small step in the right direction. More important, it reverses, at least for now, a weak and ineffective Clinton policy that has emboldened terrorists and confirmed that facilitating terror is without cost to the states…” Go back to the top of cut three, Mike, re-cue the thing. Now that you’ve heard all of the evidence of how the Republicans, the neocons, supported this, urged all of their supporters to get behind it on the basis that the country comes together in times of war, in times of attacks on American citizens internationally, Bill Clinton on Fox News Sunday claimed that Republicans were obsessed with his obsession with bin Laden, claimed that he was obsessed with bin Laden, were being critical. Here from the top the whole bite now.
CLINTON: I’m being asked this on the Fox network. ABC just had a right-wing conservative running their little pathway to 9/11, falsely claiming it was based on the 9/11 Commission report with three things asserted against me directly contradicted by the 9/11 Commission report. And I think it’s very interesting that all the conservative Republicans who now say I didn’t do enough claim that I was too obsessed with bin Laden, all of President Bush’s neocons thought I was too obsessed with bin Laden, they had no meetings on bin Laden for nine months after I left —
RUSH: Stop the tape. How many times did Clinton meet with his CIA — what was it Jim Woolsey said? Had one meeting in eight years, one personal meeting in the Oval Office with the CIA director, with Jim Woolsey, and after that very few meetings with Tenet. You know, it’s absurd, too, to compare what he didn’t do in eight years to what the Bush administration did or didn’t do in eight months. He also is lying about turning over a terrorist program. He quotes Richard Clarke. If you read Richard Clarke’s book, Richard Clarke’s book does not back up a lot of what Clinton asserted.
CLINTON: All the right-wingers who now say I didn’t do enough said I did too much, same people.
RUSH: Stop the tape. Folks, it’s just pathological. You know, it is just pathological. The guy has told himself this lie that he believes to be the truth. Pathological liar, tells lies to himself to believe them, and he firmly believes this, make no mistake. In his mind, he’s not lying, he’s telling the absolute truth. He really believes that all these neocons are out there saying he was too focused on bin Laden.
CLINTON: — trying to get me to withdraw from Somalia in 1993, the next day after we were involved in Black Hawk Down —
RUSH: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Trying to get him to withdraw from Somalia? And after Republicans tried to force him out of Somalia, Black Hawk Down episode happened the next day?
CLINTON: — refused to do it and stayed six months and had an orderly transfer to the United Nations. Okay, now let’s look at all the criticisms. Black Hawk Down, Somalia. There is not a living soul in the world who thought Osama bin Laden had anything to do with Black Hawk Down or was paying any attention to it or even knew Al-Qaeda was a going concern in October of ’93.
RUSH: Not the point, but they did in ’95 when they intercepted all these plans to blow up airplanes from the Pacific Rim to the west coast of California and the United States over the Pacific Ocean. And besides, this is not the point, that nobody had heard of bin Laden, nobody knew of Al-Qaeda. Mr. President, the American people who watched ABC one night saw an interview with bin Laden in ’95 or ’96 in which he said that he was ginned up and encouraged by our reaction to the situation on the ground in Somalia. So even if nobody knew about it in ’93 or ’94 whenever it happened, we all heard about it in ’95. There’s simply no excuse here. To try to say that nobody knew about bin Laden, and nobody heard about it, nobody is making that claim, this is not presidential. Bin Laden himself said during your presidency, sir — Nobody is making this up. Right-wingers and neocons are not making up the fact that bin Laden drew conclusions from our exit in Somalia. Bin Laden said it. Now, you can try to rewrite history and reconstruct it, but it’s a mistake bringing all this up because there’s a new media out there, sir, and it’s not going to go well for you.
END TRANSCRIPT
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